In existing 3GPP, a base station inserts a demodulation reference signal into a data stream of user equipment, and notifies the user equipment. A transmission power of a data stream of the user is the same as a transmission power of the demodulation reference signal of the user. It is to be noted that, in some examples, the demodulation reference signal may also be referred to as a user specific reference signal, and the data stream may also be referred to as a data layer. In multi-user superposition transmission, the existing transmission manner of the demodulation reference signal has the following defects: 1) the base station needs to notify a power allocation coefficient to at least one user equipment, and since the power allocation coefficient may be dynamically adjusted according to a channel condition, the dynamic notification of the power allocation coefficient results in higher signaling overhead, and 2) the transmission power allocated to the demodulation reference signal of each user equipment is only a partial power, thus the quality of equivalent channel estimation is affected.